© gillena cox 2025
To all my friends and visitors from The USA (card courtedy Pinteredt)
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
123 go!
One two three, go!
Three sides to a triangle,
Third time's a charm.
A trinity of mountains,
The explorer named us Trinidad.
Land of steelpan so we transformed,
A twentieth century gift,
To a world loving music,
As much as we do.
One two three, go!
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
I use my plastic funnel to pour liquid from a jug into a bottle. No fuss no spills. A simple kitchen procedure can turn into a meditation of remberance.
I am smiling to myself. Why ? My granddaughter comes to mind. In her little protective days, when her dad and mum were her world.
"Gramma!" she says to me "my dad does not have strainers like that, i must tell him to get some"
Ah but they just keep growing up, with new challenges for both mum and dad
first by her mum
the teenager is scolded
also by her dad
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain
Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem “Love is not all.”
Maybe Just Maybe
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.
Ah! but so puissant is need of it
It must be something necessary
Neither food, rest, nor shelter
What is it then ?
Not sustenance, not time out, not abode
Then what is it?
Maybe some DNA particle,
Which, under the microscope spells human.
Instinctively we know it ,
I believe it is, and is crucial
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.”
Ah! but so puissant is need of it,
It is scripturally defined.
Maybe, just maybe,
It is the driving force of humanity's existence.
Maybe all we need to understand is,
That love is, love matters.
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
So This Is Sweet T&T
It's the month of November;
Shaking shak shak, playing mandolin and
guitar,
Frilly shirts swaying below
The smiles of young girls,
Singing in school parang, contests.
Christmas trees; tinseled, baubled,
Spring up in banks, restuarants,
And such like places, blinking lights.
So this is sweet T&T;
Where the candy canes appear,
In sweet shops and parlours,
Because St Nicholas feast is near.
Buy a pack!
Hear the crinkle of celophane
Opening them.
Every child loves a candy cane;
Maybe its the shape,
Or maybe the stripes,
They love them.
So this is sweet T&T;
Soca, parang, and Christmas tunes
Play on the radio one hundred day to Christmas
Its all about, black cake and sorrel,
Ginger beer and ponche de creme,
Feasting and feteing;
A boy born in a manger.
Long before we were born.
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
Quadrille - Coax
Who coaxed the stars from my night sky
And left a blanket of charcoal cloud
Were not i
The one who sang aloud
Soca songs for party days
To liven mood swings oft
And psalms fit for church ways
Seemingly not enough.
My stars!
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
Present Day Shopper
Who goes to market to buy a fat pig
When children's rhymes are all but near extinct
Today our grocery stores are chuck fill
Enough lables, fill the basket with fig
Tap tapping on key boards no need of ink
Who goes to market to buy a fat pig
When children's rhymes are all but near extinct
What ever you do hold onto your wig
Don't let it perish in the kitchen sink
Nor let it be damaged in just a blink
Who goes to market to buy a fat pig
When children's rhymes are all but near extinct
Today our grocery stores are chuck fill
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
Need of Lighting
It's as if the stars feel,
There is no need of lighting,
They have below, their neons,
They have their red light spaces,
I used to look up in a sky,
Full of nighf stars, some twinkling
But now not so.
The sky turns coal black
I wait for a lucky dawn,
When i can see a twinkling,
When i can even count them.
Tsk tsk!
It's as if the stars feel,
There is no more,
Need of lighting.
© gillena cox 2025
[image from google]
November Letters
Was it yesterday? No, not yesterday. I learned to know the love of bare November days, before the coming of the snow, from letters.
Letters written in beautiful cursive hand, telling bleak tales, written when long nights, stretched to insomnia.
Insomnia, was never the writer's pleasure, rather instead, the stretch of words penned across oceans in relative conversation, with the art of anticipation to receive reciprocal replies, these were her November guests.
Those answers which warm the heart, like hot chocolate in which tiny mashmallows surf, on nights chilly like blizzard winds.
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
[image from google]
Hands Engaged Love Language - A Choka
Coconut grated
On a tin grater, grated
Now water added
Coconut milk then squeezed
Through fine cotton cloth
Sugar stirred into the milk
Boil, until thickened
Maybe chocolate added or
Or maybe ginger
Thicken enough to scoop out
To a flat surface
A large plate will surffice
Cut squares evenly
For children cherished, this sweet
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
Hands Emgaged Love Language
Coconut grated on a tin grater
Enough water added
Coconut milk squeezed
Through fine cotton cloth
Sugar stirred into coconut milk
Boiled, until thickened and pastey
Maybe chocolate could be added
Or maybe ginger
Beat beat beat thicken some more
Thick enough to scoop out
Onto a flat surface
Perhaps a large plate
Cut into squares when cool enough
A snack, a delight for children cherished
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
Quadrille - Whirl
What a whirl of weird goings ons,
Badjohn talk, terrorize the Caribbean,
And, as if that is not enough,
A whirligig of a hurricane with hit no miss
Words, words, watch your words
US, Venezuela, China, Russia
Let peace instead whirl
Peace! whirl peace.
© gillena cox 2025
Here in Trinidad and Tobago🇹🇹 we celebrate 100 days of Christmas starting 23rd Sepember to 25th December; hosted by Sweet 101.1 FM Radio, where our local Christmas music is featured
ENJOY THE MUSIC
